Monthly Archives: June 2008

I came into Castlevania late. Despite the fact that this series is considered one of the classics, I had made it to the 21st century having never played any title in the series. Once I found myself in possession of an NES, I figured I’d give one of the games in the series a playthrough and right this wrong. Unfortunately, the random Castlevania I picked up was Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. This asspile of a game almost tricked me into skipping a brilliant PS1 game, so convinced was I that the series was worthless.

Simon’s Quest is a genre fusing blend between the Shitty Platformer genre and the Shitty RPG genre. The end result is, well, really shitty. The game’s main schtick is that it is sometimes daytime and sometimes nighttime, and the game’s supernatural monsters are much tougher at night.

I’ll grant you that this is a pretty cool idea, and if it had been produced by, oh, let’s say, Hideo Kojima, you could have yourself a pretty neat game. However, in this particular game, the mechanic just leads to a constant pingponging between slightly annoying gameplay and overwhelmingly annoying gameplay.

Even worse, the game makes you talk to people and buy stuff at towns. The towns shut down at night. That means that you will either find yourself sitting around, waiting for night to turn to day so you can continue to play, or, more likely, you will find yourself playing a different video game. Isaac’s #1 Rule of Game Design: Every game mechanic should encourage the player to do things that are fun.

The game was terrible, but the concept of a rpg/platformer hybrid was a righteous idea. Symphony of the Night, a later Castlevania, would deliver the goods that Simon’s Quest lacks. I almost never knew that, because of the anti-Castlevania bias this game created for me. It just proves that you can’t judge a video game series on any one title.

I came into Castlevania late. Despite the fact that this series is considered one of the classics, I had made it to the 21st century having never played any title in the series. Once I found myself in possession of an NES, I figured I’d give one of the games in the series a playthrough and right this wrong. Unfortunately, the random Castlevania I picked up was Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. This asspile of a game almost tricked me into skipping a brilliant PS1 game, so convinced was I that the series was worthless.

Simon’s Quest is a genre fusing blend between the Shitty Platformer genre and the Shitty RPG genre. The end result is, well, really shitty. The game’s main schtick is that it is sometimes daytime and sometimes nighttime, and the game’s supernatural monsters are much tougher at night.

I’ll grant you that this is a pretty cool idea, and if it had been produced by, oh, let’s say, Hideo Kojima, you could have yourself a pretty neat game. However, in this particular game, the mechanic just leads to a constant pingponging between slightly annoying gameplay and overwhelmingly annoying gameplay.

Even worse, the game makes you talk to people and buy stuff at towns. The towns shut down at night. That means that you will either find yourself sitting around, waiting for night to turn to day so you can continue to play, or, more likely, you will find yourself playing a different video game. Isaac’s #1 Rule of Game Design: Every game mechanic should encourage the player to do things that are fun.

The game was terrible, but the concept of a rpg/platformer hybrid was a righteous idea. Symphony of the Night, a later Castlevania, would deliver the goods that Simon’s Quest lacks. I almost never knew that, because of the anti-Castlevania bias this game created for me. It just proves that you can’t judge a video game series on any one title.

This is the worst generic sidescrolling action game I’ve ever played. And I’ve played both Bugs Bunny’s Rabbit Rampage, and Home Alone 2: The Video Game. This game is so generically awful that there is nothing interesting to say about how bad it is.

Douglas Adams wrote that the only remarkable thing about the character of Arthur Dent as a person, was that he was remarkably unremarkable. Castle of Dragon is that sort of game. A bad guy kidnaps a princess, and a knight guy must hit monsters with a sword until you stop playing because there is not a single element of this game that isn’t present and better executed in over a dozen other game and God this is so boring even the name is entirely generic and nondescript and man, I will never play this game again.

This is the worst generic sidescrolling action game I’ve ever played. And I’ve played both Bugs Bunny’s Rabbit Rampage, and Home Alone 2: The Video Game. This game is so generically awful that there is nothing interesting to say about how bad it is.

Douglas Adams wrote that the only remarkable thing about the character of Arthur Dent as a person, was that he was remarkably unremarkable. Castle of Dragon is that sort of game. A bad guy kidnaps a princess, and a knight guy must hit monsters with a sword until you stop playing because there is not a single element of this game that isn’t present and better executed in over a dozen other game and God this is so boring even the name is entirely generic and nondescript and man, I will never play this game again.

My friend (lj person icon)flyngzebra (pretend that word was a link), and I
are toying with the idea of creating a woman’s magazine to sell at
supermarkets. We are going to call it *Womanly Concerns*. It will be about
things that are of a concern to women.

However, it turns out I have no idea what concerns women, so I thought I’d
ask the internet. Women of my friendslist, what is it that concerns you? How
could one create a magazine that addresses these concerns? How do unhealthy
standards of beauty factor in?

This is a kind of neat game about shooting and finding cover. I think I would have really liked it in the 90’s. However, it lacks is a compelling reason to play it in 2008. C’mon, this is a world where Gears of War exists.

Ok, wait, what I said before is not entirely true. There is one compelling reason to play this game. After you clear a screen your character runs from the foreground into the background. Specifically, he does a bowlegged jaunt, waving his gun in the air. He’s so happy! Happy to be be killing.

This is a kind of neat game about shooting and finding cover. I think I would have really liked it in the 90’s. However, it lacks is a compelling reason to play it in 2008. C’mon, this is a world where Gears of War exists.

Ok, wait, what I said before is not entirely true. There is one compelling reason to play this game. After you clear a screen your character runs from the foreground into the background. Specifically, he does a bowlegged jaunt, waving his gun in the air. He’s so happy! Happy to be be killing.

I can’t believe Origins is this week. I am going to watch the hell out of
some Smithies! And also play some games I guess. Is anyone else going to
Origins and pumped as heck?

I’ve not been taking enough goof off time for myself lateley, so my plan is
to try to start watching some cartoons on Saturday mornings, like we all did
in the days of yore. I’m thinking if I can get up and watch a two hour
block of rotating content while eating cold cereal, I’ll be a happy guy. My
initial lineup is Sam & Max, The Muppet Show (not a cartoon), Space Ghost,
Looney Tunes, and The Venture Bros. I love cartoons.

If yesterday was Thursday, today must be Fluff Film
Friday at scifiobserver.com! This week’s Fluff movie is Batman &
Robin. It is the worst movie ever made. In other self-promotion news, I’ve
got a review
of Atomic Robo up at popmatters.com.

As some of you may be aware, my penis has never had a name. Despite years
of meditation on the subject, nothing has ever seen quite right. Some folks
have taken to calling it my Cyberman, but that was only ever an informal
nickname. And so it has remained unnamed.

Well, dammit, penises need names. So, as of today, I am proud to announce
that my penis shall now and forever more be known as Lieutenant junior grade
Iroquois Plisken. You can call it Lt. Plisken for short.

Atomic Robo is a comic book made for people who love funnybooks. Not for fans of graphic novels or sequential art. Forget subtlety and expression and well-crafted storytelling. Atomic Robo is going to beat up some Nazis and tell jokes while doing so. When he runs out of Nazis there will be a monster-fight that will probably end with explosions.

Before I get into the meat of the book, I want to note how well it has been put together. For a three-dollar comic, not only do you get twenty-two pages of full-color story, with all the ads in the back, but the book is printed heavy duty paper stock. Furthermore, each issue comes with between three to six pages of either pin ups or back up stories. The publisher, Red 5 Comics, is putting together a better-made book than anyone else on the market.

As for the actual content, creators Clevinger and Wegener have created a really fun book that happens to be totally unoriginal. It follows the exploits of Atomic Robo, an absurdly tough robot created by Nikola Tesla, a robot who’s life is dedicated to science and adventure andcracking wise. Since the forties, Robo has been investigating the paranormal as part of the Action Scientists of The Tesladyne Institute. If you read comic books, this probably sounds familiar, because the setup is almost identical to Hellboy, with a dash of The Five Fists of Science thrown in for good effect.

One would be doing themselves a disservice to dismiss this title just because it is wholly derivative. Even though the book is Hellboy-Lite, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its own merits and identity. While the subject matters of the two books are quite superficially similar, the tones are solidly different. Mignola’s Hellboy books tell stories of Gothic horror by way of Kirby. The boys making Atomic Robo, on the other hand, are creating brilliant adventure comedy, served straight up.

Clevinger comes from a school of writing that focuses on all the gleefully fun parts of adventure fiction, while minimizing things like plot, characterization, and exposition. In this book, the plot exists to do little more than further jokes and create situations for adventure. While there is enough characterization to invest one in the goings on, frankly, the narrative of the miniseries completely falls apart after issue four. I certainly don’t care. Robo goes to Mars. Robo fights Nazis. Robo beats up giant ants. Things blow up.

The action is well paced and filled with expertly timed jokes. Just as importantly, the art is gorgeous. The characters are expressive and funny, while the action is fluid and explodey. Scott Wegener’s art is so good, I expect that soon he’ll be paid tons more money to draw much duller books for a major publisher. In the meantime I’ll relish what he’s doing on this book.

This book is special. While these stories of a robot punching things may seem like unnoteworthy fluff, I believe good fluff is priceless and totally worthy of note. Reading this book never failed to a big grin on my face. By the time I got to the third issue, where Robo spent the whole story beating up a pyramid, my mounting glee burst forth as I shouted to the world, “Holy crap, I love comic books!”

Books like this are why I read comic books. The greatest strength that a comic book has is that the creators can put anything they can imagine on the page, no matter how bizarre or impossible. A good comic book is one that presents a world more exciting and fun and magical than our own. By this definition, Atomic Robo is a very good comic book indeed.

Bionic Commando is the sequel to the arcade classic, Commando. Rather than rest on their laurels, and re-tread the material covered in the original, the makers of Bionic Commando decided to entirely alter the genre, tone, and main character for this new outing. Commando was a straightforward game with a philosophy of shoot every damn thing that moves. It was a classic example of overhead run-and-gun games. The bionic version is a side-scrolling platform game where you CAN’T JUMP. Instead you use a weird “bionic” arm winch to swing and lift your character, as you infiltrate an enemy compound to rescue Super Joe, the hero of Commando. The result is a game with a totally unique feel of play. It has a flavor that feels like a mix of Metroid and Metal Gear.

Do you remember how in Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan James Bond got captured at the end of Act I and spent a year being tortured? That was bullshit. Brosnan Bond does not suffer that sort of failure. He leaves that to other, more human Bonds. That is how wrong the plot of Bionic Commando feels. The story hinges on Super Joe being kidnapped by Hitler’s zombification squad. Super Joe is simply not P.O.W. material. This implausible scenario almost mucks up a game where the goal is to kill zombie Hitler.

Bionic Commando is a bizarre game with some deep flaws, but a lot of great bits. And it dared to mine design territory that 20 years later remains largely untapped. Good stuff.

Bionic Commando is the sequel to the arcade classic, Commando. Rather than rest on their laurels, and re-tread the material covered in the original, the makers of Bionic Commando decided to entirely alter the genre, tone, and main character for this new outing. Commando was a straightforward game with a philosophy of shoot every damn thing that moves. It was a classic example of overhead run-and-gun games. The bionic version is a side-scrolling platform game where you CAN’T JUMP. Instead you use a weird “bionic” arm winch to swing and lift your character, as you infiltrate an enemy compound to rescue Super Joe, the hero of Commando. The result is a game with a totally unique feel of play. It has a flavor that feels like a mix of Metroid and Metal Gear.

Do you remember how in Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan James Bond got captured at the end of Act I and spent a year being tortured? That was bullshit. Brosnan Bond does not suffer that sort of failure. He leaves that to other, more human Bonds. That is how wrong the plot of Bionic Commando feels. The story hinges on Super Joe being kidnapped by Hitler’s zombification squad. Super Joe is simply not P.O.W. material. This implausible scenario almost mucks up a game where the goal is to kill zombie Hitler.

Bionic Commando is a bizarre game with some deep flaws, but a lot of great bits. And it dared to mine design territory that 20 years later remains largely untapped. Good stuff.

Bad Dudes is an utterly generic, poorly constructed 8 bit brawler. It would be a just another forgotten NES game, were it not for the combination of its awe-inspiring name, a terrible catchphrase (“I’m bad!”), and the best opening sequence of any video game ever:

“THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS. ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT?”

All I’m sayin’ is if Contra III had this screen for an opening it would have been the single greatest damn video game ever. Instead Bad Dudes is a terrible game that you must play, not because it is worth playing, but out of fear that you be deemed Not Bad Enough.

You gotta love that the games heroes, Blade and Striker, are not attempting to rescue The President out of any sense of civic duty, but out of a need to prove their Bad status. I can totally understand that philosophy, and in all honestly, there is little I wouldn’t do if challenged in that manner. Am I a Bad Enough Dude to sing in public? Am I a Bad Enough Dude to eat those really spicy chicken wings? Am I a Bad Enough Dude to accept Christ as my personal savior? Well, crap, when you put it like THAT, I am!

The other great thing about this game is that you get to choose between playing as Blade or Striker, despite the fact that a) they are functionally identical. b) they are almost physically identical and c) there is no 2 player cooperative mode. Ok, that isn’t actually great at all, but it is pretty fluff.

Bad Dudes is an utterly generic, poorly constructed 8 bit brawler. It would be a just another forgotten NES game, were it not for the combination of its awe-inspiring name, a terrible catchphrase (“I’m bad!”), and the best opening sequence of any video game ever:

“THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS. ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT?”

All I’m sayin’ is if Contra III had this screen for an opening it would have been the single greatest damn video game ever. Instead Bad Dudes is a terrible game that you must play, not because it is worth playing, but out of fear that you be deemed Not Bad Enough.

You gotta love that the games heroes, Blade and Striker, are not attempting to rescue The President out of any sense of civic duty, but out of a need to prove their Bad status. I can totally understand that philosophy, and in all honestly, there is little I wouldn’t do if challenged in that manner. Am I a Bad Enough Dude to sing in public? Am I a Bad Enough Dude to eat those really spicy chicken wings? Am I a Bad Enough Dude to accept Christ as my personal savior? Well, crap, when you put it like THAT, I am!

The other great thing about this game is that you get to choose between playing as Blade or Striker, despite the fact that a) they are functionally identical. b) they are almost physically identical and c) there is no 2 player cooperative mode. Ok, that isn’t actually great at all, but it is pretty fluff.

And so it is time to say farewell to the 2600, to the VCS, to the Tele-Games. Whatever you call it, the Atari was a landmark for video gaming, it was the system I was raised on, and it clearly still has a few games worth playing.

The past few months of gameplay have been fun. There may have been a lot of Fire Fighter caliber games, but the occasional Frogger made it all worth while. My tour of the Atari hit awesome stops like Space Shuttle and Kaboom!, and of course, Space Invaders, but I don’t own every Atari game, and I must have missed some gems. What great Atari games do I need to track down? Any Atari games I’ve skipped that are worth playing, please tell me.

As I finally wrap up the Atari, I look ahead at the long road ahead. One system down, but fourteen to go. Next up is the Nintendo Entertainment System, otherwise known as the system that all the other kids were playing while I played Atari. Although I played a lot of NES games on other people’s Nintendos over the years, I only bought a NES of my very own in 2003. There are a lot of classic NES games that have passed me by, or that I have only discovered years after their release. A lot of the games I play in the next couple of weeks will be brand spanking new to me.

Going into this system, high on the success of my paddle repair, I decided to refurbish my NES with a new 72 pin connector. Y’know how you always have to jiggle and blow on games to get them to work? That’s because faulty engineering means that the act of putting a game into your NES damages the system. Brilliant.

At any rate, the operation seems to gone off without a hitch, so for the first time in my life, I can get an NES game to start up on the first try. However, since I’m terrible at electronics repair, I’ve probably created a ticking time bomb of console hardware, ready to explode at any moment. So, y’know, this new leg of the tour should be exciting.

And so it is time to say farewell to the 2600, to the VCS, to the Tele-Games. Whatever you call it, the Atari was a landmark for video gaming, it was the system I was raised on, and it clearly still has a few games worth playing.

The past few months of gameplay have been fun. There may have been a lot of Fire Fighter caliber games, but the occasional Frogger made it all worth while. My tour of the Atari hit awesome stops like Space Shuttle and Kaboom!, and of course, Space Invaders, but I don’t own every Atari game, and I must have missed some gems. What great Atari games do I need to track down? Any Atari games I’ve skipped that are worth playing, please tell me.

As I finally wrap up the Atari, I look ahead at the long road ahead. One system down, but fourteen to go. Next up is the Nintendo Entertainment System, otherwise known as the system that all the other kids were playing while I played Atari. Although I played a lot of NES games on other people’s Nintendos over the years, I only bought a NES of my very own in 2003. There are a lot of classic NES games that have passed me by, or that I have only discovered years after their release. A lot of the games I play in the next couple of weeks will be brand spanking new to me.

Going into this system, high on the success of my paddle repair, I decided to refurbish my NES with a new 72 pin connector. Y’know how you always have to jiggle and blow on games to get them to work? That’s because faulty engineering means that the act of putting a game into your NES damages the system. Brilliant.

At any rate, the operation seems to gone off without a hitch, so for the first time in my life, I can get an NES game to start up on the first try. However, since I’m terrible at electronics repair, I’ve probably created a ticking time bomb of console hardware, ready to explode at any moment. So, y’know, this new leg of the tour should be exciting.

I’ve got a new weekly column running at http://www.scifiobserver.com. Sci
Fi Observer is a slick new sci fi news website with swell writing by
all-around good guy Kevin Garcia, and some guy named Mike. He seems cool,
as well.

At any rate, I’ve been suckered into writing a column about what I call
“fluff movies”. You should read it if you like dumb jokes about awesome
movies.

While it can be quite difficult to make a good racing game, there is a lower limit upon how badly you can make one. Street Racer is that lower limit. The ugly cars are huge while the straightaway track is tiny. You compete against another car… driving on a separate track. Perhaps worst of all, you aren’t trying to be the first to finish, for there is no finish line. No, you’re trying to travel further than your opponent within an arbitrary time limit.

Wait a minute… this is the exact same game as Speedway II! Just what do you think you’re trying to pull, Atari Corporation of America?

While it can be quite difficult to make a good racing game, there is a lower limit upon how badly you can make one. Street Racer is that lower limit. The ugly cars are huge while the straightaway track is tiny. You compete against another car… driving on a separate track. Perhaps worst of all, you aren’t trying to be the first to finish, for there is no finish line. No, you’re trying to travel further than your opponent within an arbitrary time limit.

Wait a minute… this is the exact same game as Speedway II! Just what do you think you’re trying to pull, Atari Corporation of America?

While it can be quite difficult to make a good racing game, there is a lower limit upon how badly you can make one. Speedway II is that lower limit. The ugly cars are huge while the straightaway track is tiny. You compete against another car… driving on a separate track. Perhaps worst of all, you aren’t trying to be the first to finish, for there is no finish line. No, you’re trying to travel further than your opponent within an arbitrary time limit.

The title of this game would suggest that it is the follow up to a previous game named “Speedway”. I have never heard of such a game, so I must assume that the previous game was so impossibly crude that a secret cabal of racing fans took it upon themselves to suppress all evidence that the game had ever been. The sequel is just barely not awful enough that a global conspiracy to destroy all trace of it need not have been formed.

While it can be quite difficult to make a good racing game, there is a lower limit upon how badly you can make one. Speedway II is that lower limit. The ugly cars are huge while the straightaway track is tiny. You compete against another car… driving on a separate track. Perhaps worst of all, you aren’t trying to be the first to finish, for there is no finish line. No, you’re trying to travel further than your opponent within an arbitrary time limit.

The title of this game would suggest that it is the follow up to a previous game named “Speedway”. I have never heard of such a game, so I must assume that the previous game was so impossibly crude that a secret cabal of racing fans took it upon themselves to suppress all evidence that the game had ever been. The sequel is just barely not awful enough that a global conspiracy to destroy all trace of it need not have been formed.

There’s something special about being on the road after most people have gone to bed. The world becomes still. Things are differently lit. The world that you know takes on an alien form. Even if you’re used to the late hours, there is still a sense of seeing a world that most people don’t see. You’re looking at things through hacker eyes.

I like being able to enjoy the world around me without all the distractions you get during the day. When the sun is up, everything operates on a track, part of a machine. People have jobs and schedules and time limits. Late at night, that all goes away. There is a feeling of being off of the grid, of being outside of the normal world. It is easier to live in the moment, rather than in constant motion. Nighttime is magical.

When I was a little kid, and wasn’t allowed to drive or to stay up after dark, I loved this game. I guess even then, I knew the night was special. I no longer need a simulation to go night driving, but I still have mad affection for this game.

It was the closest I could get to driving around at night. Even though, today I would be more likely to play GTA or actually drive around at night, I’ve got mad affection for this one.

There’s something special about being on the road after most people have gone to bed. The world becomes still. Things are differently lit. The world that you know takes on an alien form. Even if you’re used to the late hours, there is still a sense of seeing a world that most people don’t see. You’re looking at things through hacker eyes.

I like being able to enjoy the world around me without all the distractions you get during the day. When the sun is up, everything operates on a track, part of a machine. People have jobs and schedules and time limits. Late at night, that all goes away. There is a feeling of being off of the grid, of being outside of the normal world. It is easier to live in the moment, rather than in constant motion. Nighttime is magical.

When I was a little kid, and wasn’t allowed to drive or to stay up after dark, I loved this game. I guess even then, I knew the night was special. I no longer need a simulation to go night driving, but I still have mad affection for this game.

It was the closest I could get to driving around at night. Even though, today I would be more likely to play GTA or actually drive around at night, I’ve got mad affection for this one.